Automation design principles for Pega Platform

Design principles

When invoking both attended and unattended automations with Pega Platform™, adhere to the following design principles to develop efficient automations:

Execute synchronous automations
Limit automation data inputs and outputs
Set valid completion status
Other integration requirements and considerations

Execute synchronous automations

Pega Platform applications execute automations synchronously. The Pega Platform application waits for the automation to complete before proceeding to the next step in the case workflow. As a result, design concise automations with a single purpose or focus for attended automations. A best practice is to break down more extensive functionality into smaller automations to achieve quick response times.

Limit automation data inputs and outputs

Pega Robot Studio limits inputs and outputs for automations to scalar properties that map to a single entity or value. Scalar properties such as Text, Boolean, numbers, and dates are the only types of properties transmitted between a Pega Platform application and an automation. Transmission between automations and Pega Platform applications does not support hierarchical structures such as lists, pages, page groups, and page lists. Any properties that are transferred to an automation must be marked as a relevant record in Pega Platform. For more information on how to configure relevant records in Pega Platform, see Understanding relevant records.

Note: The only exception to the rule regarding hierarchical structures is the use of JSON strings in a text property. You can use a Data Transform to automatically map a JSON string's contents to the structure of a Pega Platform application.

Set valid completion status

Each automation in Pega Robot Studio must have a Robot Activity component that contains the ActivityName, ClassName, and relevant data fields. Pega Platform calls these automations; a Pega Platform case returns a completion status. For example, if you have an automation that retrieves credit information for a Credit Repair case, a completion status is returned. After processing the robot activity, the automation calls SetCompletionStatus to return one of three status values:

Completed
Completed with errors
Did not complete

By default, the return status is for informational purposes only and does impact flow processing. However, the Pega Platform application can read the return value and message and design error handling logic as part of the workflow. The messages can be customized as needed. For more information on the Robot Activity component, see Robot Activities in Robot Studio.

Requirements for integrating Pega Platform cases and Pega Robot Studio Automations

To successfully connect your case in Pega Platform to your automation in Pega Robot Studio, you must configure the following:

The Pega application must have Pega Robot Manager 8.6.X as part of the built-in application stack to communicate with the proper endpoints.
Dev Studio users require the PegaAPI role in their access group to retrieve the relevant properties and the Robot Manager Developer role in their access group to deploy the package.
In the Post-processing section in Pega Platform, the Run robotic automation value must have the same value as the ActivityName set in the Robot Activity component in Pega Robot Studio.
Provide the fully-qualified class name on the Robot Activity component of the case that invokes the Robot Activity's specific automation.
Pega Robot Studio provides the server URL for the Pega Platform application, user name, and password to access the Pega Platform application.
Ensure that the expected data formats for transmission back and forth from the case and the automation are known. For example, if the case requests a date from the automation in the mm/dd/yy format, you must verify the data transfers in that specific format.